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Some of you may know that I have been game-fishing for more than 20 years. Besides lots of various catches of different species of different sizes and weights, in 1995 I was also awarded a prize in TKO’95 (The Karachi Offshore’95) Angling Tournament for catching the heaviest King Mackerel (50 lbs).

During this entire journey, I have caught various species of salt-water fishes from the inshore and off shore waters of the Arabian Sea… and since beginning, I have been dreaming of catching a Marlin or Sailfish.

And his dream came true when I created a sort of an unregistered record by catching a huge 111.33 lbs Blue Marlin from the offshore waters of Continental Shelf, Arabian Sea on December 3, 2016.

It was a real tough fight but Alhamdulillah, I successfully landed this Blue Marlin. In fact after catching some giant Tunas, while trolling at 10:42 AM, this monster Blue Marlin bit my Zuker blue squirt lure, which was tied with my 80 lbs Daiwa Mono line on the Shimano TLD-50 reel mounted on the Daiwa STP 24Kg heavy trolling Rod.

The moment was so thrilling when it got hooked as it immediately jumped off the water and started tail-dancing. Usually, billfish when hooked start jumping and running in order to get unhooked, but luckily with some techniques I learnt from my Guru, I managed to keep the line tight and made her remain hooked until landed.

It was a 15 minutes tough game and after her 2-3 more jumps I landed my dream catch successfully.

(Abdul Hameed Kath is a proud Pakistani. By profession he is a CFO of a Textile Buying House, (Synergies Worldwide). He is a social worker. Ex-President of Memon Professional Forum, Ex President of The Okhai Memon Youth Services, Ex-Chairman of Governing Board of Usman Memorial Hospital)

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Karachi: November 11, 2015 – Microsoft has launched the ‘Upgrade Your World’ campaign’ in Pakistan, to create awareness among the school children, about the benefits of upgrading your computers to the latest Microsoft ‘Windows 10’ – best ever Windows. This series of Road shows will showcase the latest Windows10 along with detailed insight about different programs of Microsoft for young students and opportunity to meet with Microsoft team.

Beginning from the city of Bahawalpur in southern Punjab on the 10th of November 2015, a team of Microsoft professionals will visit numerous schools and colleges to inform and guide the students about the powerful features of ‘Windows10’. This initiative will later proceed northwards, through 10 major cities of Pakistan, visiting the prominent academic institutions in each city and conclude in Islamabad on the 20th of November, 2015. The insightful activity is being supported by the Higher Education Commission (HEC) of Pakistan.

As a part of this campaign, an enlightening ‘Bloggers Evening’ will also be conducted in Lahore, on the 15th November, 2015. A large number of bloggers will be invited to the event, where the team of Microsoft experts will disseminate valuable information to enhance the skills, knowledge and outreach of the participating bloggers, besides lauding the performance of the outstanding bloggers.

The Country Manager of Microsoft Pakistan – Mr. Nadeem Malik stated that; “Today marks a real milestone in our “Upgrade Your World” initiative in Pakistan. We are fortunate enough to see the real impact this organization is making and will make first-hand impressions at different schools. We will be providing children with a Windows10 upgrade, so they can learn more and create more impact, around the world. This has truly been an inspiring way to launch a new generation of Windows and we look forward to sharing and creating greater momentum. We hope that the children in Pakistan will derive maximum benefits from these roadshows.”

Microsoft is making fast progress on a broader goal of celebrating people and organizations showing commendable performance. It has been truly exciting to see how Microsoft’s employees and general public around the world have been mobilized for action, since the launch of the campaign to #Upgrade Your World. Whether sharing a meal with less fortunate individuals, donating items to those in need or visiting a secondary schools to create awareness among the students, people all over the world have embraced the movement and joined in to make a difference –big or small.

About Microsoft
Founded in 1975, Microsoft (Nasdaq “MSFT”) is the worldwide leader in software, services and Internet technologies for personal and business computing. The company offers a wide range of products and services designed to empower people through great software – any time, any place and on any device.
Microsoft Pakistan opened its offices in 1999 with over 200 partners all over the country. MS Pakistan is Part of the NEPA subsidiary which comprises Lebanon, Jordan, Morocco, Algeria, Libya, Tunisia, Iraq, Afghanistan, Syria and the Palestinian authority. As the use of software and technology increases with the number of Pakistani companies and individuals depending on IT as part of their everyday life, the company is poised to thrive even more over the coming years.
Microsoft Corporation’s address on the World Wide Web is: http://www.microsoft.com
Microsoft Pakistan’s Web site is: http://www.microsoft.com/pakistan

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The people of the northern areas of our country have been going through a very difficult time. Skardu, Gilgit, Chitral’s most of the villages have been washed away by the heavy floods caused by the rain and melting of glaciers, due to which they have to take refuge in caves and mountains where the weather is also very harsh and difficult.

This is the worst ever flooding in this region, yet even the respectable people of these areas are not asking or demanding any kind of help…but we all must step forward and help them by whatever means we could, so that they could stand up on their feet and start living their normal lives again.

Please donate generously from your charity or zakat funds.
Rest assured that your donated funds will be disbursed among the needy and deserving families with great responsibility through our representative personally who is going to Chitral next week, Inshaa’ Allah.

To deposit your funds directly to the bank account, please contact me via Facebook message or whatsapp and I shall provide you with the necessary bank details.

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More than 61 years have passed since the death of founder of Pakistan , Quaid-i-Azam Mohammad Ali Jinnah. But even today, nothing about Jinnah seems ordinary —not his legal career, politics, personal life, his legacy and even the property he left behind.
The great South Asian intellectual Eqbal Ahmed once described Jinnah as an enigma of modern history. His aristocratic English lifestyle, Victorian manners, and secular outlook rendered him a most unlikely leader of India ’s Muslims. Yet, he led them to separate statehood, creating history, and in Saad R. Khairi’s apt phrase, “altering geography”.

Much has been written about Jinnah’s legal career, politics, his role as a founder of Pakistan and his vision, but even today, very little is known about Jinnah’s personal life. This was probably because Jinnah never had time to write a diary or an autobiography and whatever little he wrote was formal and matter of fact. For most of his life, he remained reserved, taciturn and secretive. He wrote his will in May, 1939, but it was only after his death that Liaquat Ali Khan, his close associate and the first Prime Minister of Pakistan, came to know that he was its trustee and executor.

His only child, Dina Wadia, has hardly ever spoken about her father in public. So furious was Jinnah with Dina that he disowned her after she married a Parsi man against his wishes, and yet he left two lacs for her in his will. Akbar Ahmed’s movie Jinnah had just ten to fifteen minutes on Jinnah’s personal life, which are nowhere near enough.

Jinnah’s first wife, fourteen year old Emibai from Paneli village, died just eight months after he left for London at age sixteen in 1892, to join Graham’s Shipping and Trading Company, which conducted business with his father in Karachi. It was a forced marriage, as Jinnah’s mother was afraid that if he went to England , he might end up marrying an English girl. He barely knew Emibai.

Jinnah’s second marriage with the most beautiful girl of Bombay – Ruttie: The Flower of Bombay – was like a fairy tale. It began in the summer of 1916 in Darjeeling or “Town of the Thunderbolt” (how appropriate considering what was to happen there).

Jinnah had established himself as a lawyer and a politician by then and had become friends with Sir Dinshaw Maneckjee Petit, the son of one of the richest and most devoutly orthodox Parsis of the 19th century.

The Petit`s chateau overlooked Mount Everest and it was there Jinnah met his only daughter Ruttenbai Petit or Ruttie as she was popularly called. Merely sixteen at that time, Ruttie was a charming young girl. Stanley Wolpert writes in Jinnah of Pakistan : “Precociously bright, gifted in every art, beautiful in every way. As she matured, all of her talents, gifts and beauty were magnified in so delightful and unaffected a manner that she seemed a fairy princess”.

A dazzling beauty and full of life, Ruttie had exquisite taste and affable manners. Quick-witted, she was easily one of the best dressed and most popular women among the elitist circles of Bombay . She was intellectually far more mature than other girls of her age, with diverse interests ranging from poetry (Oscar Wilde being her favorite, whom she often recited) to politics. Her large collection of books, which remained in Jinnah’s possession after her death, reflected her deep interest in poetry, literature, history, occultism, mysticism and sorcery. She was an excellent horse-rider. She attended all public meetings and was inspired by Annie Besant’s Home Rule League.

A fierce supporter of India for Indians, Ruttie was once asked about rumors of Jinnah’s possible knighthood and whether she would like to be Lady Jinnah. She snapped that she would rather be separated from her husband than take on an English title.

Jinnah on the other hand also had a special interest in acting and in Shakespeare’s dramas. While in London , he had acted in some Shakespearean plays and even considered seriously taking up acting as a profession. It was his dream to play Romeo at The Globe in London . Khwaja Razi Haider thinks it was probably Jinnah’s deep interest in Shakespeare that gave him insight into the intricacies of the human character, which he was to use for grasping the essentials of Indian politics. Jinnah was thirty-nine and Ruttie sixteen, but the age difference proved no obstacle in their love. Love has no logic.
He was enamored by her beauty and charm and she was awe- struck by “Jay”, as she called him. Jinnah asked Sir Dinshaw for Ruttie’s hand in marriage, who became furious and refused. Jinnah repeatedly pleaded his case but Dinshaw never gave in, as Jinnah had a different faith and he was more than twice Ruttie’s age. Their friendship ended and Dinshaw forbade Ruttie from meeting Jinnah while she lived in his house. He even got a court injunction restraining Jinnah from meeting her (a pity no biographer has yet traced the court papers).

The couple continued to meet secretly, and patiently waited for two years until February 1918 when Ruttie turned eighteen, and was free to marry. She walked out of her parental home to which she was never to return, and converted to Islam at Bombay ’s Jamia Mosque, under the Muslim Shiite doctrine, on April 18, 1918.

The very next day, Jinnah and Ruttie got married in a quiet ceremony at Jinnah’s Malabar Hill house in Bombay . Located in a most highly-priced area today, with Maharashtra’s Chief Minister as its next-door neighbor, Jinnah House remains a dispute between India , Pakistan and Dina Wadia. Jinnah owned another house at 10 Aurangzeb Road , Delhi , which he sold just before Partition for Rs 3 lacs. The Dutch Ambassador to India lives there now. The Raja Sahib of Mahmudabad, who signed as Jinnah’s witness, and a few other friends, attended the wedding. Maulana Muhammad Hasan Najafi was Ruttie’s witness. Jinnah presented the wedding ring to Ruttie, a gift from Raja Sahab, and paid Rs 125,000 as haq mehr . Nobody from Ruttie’s family attended the wedding. Interestingly, the Nikah Nama stated “Ruttenbai” as the bride’s name instead of Marium, her Islamic name. The honeymoon was first at Raja Sahab’s Nainitaal mansion, and then at the Maidens Hotel, a magnificent property just beyond the Red Fort.

Quaid’s Nikahnama

Quaid’s house in Bombay

Gandhi’s grandson Raj Mohan Gandhi writes about the wedding in his book Understanding the Muslim Mind: “For the first time in his life, a girl had absorbed Jinnah’s emotions. Living for sometime now in a large but somber Malabar Hill house, bowing to ladies (on occasional parties) and praising their sarees but otherwise keeping a distance from them, (he) fell in love with Ruttenbai. Joy and laughter entered Jinnah’s life. The Malabar Hill house became brighter.’ She presented him with a daughter, Dina. But, ‘Alas the happiness was not destined to last; Sarojni’s veiled prediction of trouble came true”.

Sarojni Naidu, the Nightingale of India, was a huge admirer of Jinnah, wrote several poems and prose pieces on him, and many historians believe she was in love with him.

She wrote this about the wedding in a letter to Sir Syed’s son, Syed Mahmud: “So Jinnah has at last plucked the Blue Flower of his desire. It was all very sudden and caused terrible agitation and anger among the Parsis; but I think the child has made far bigger sacrifices than she yet realises. Jinnah is worth it all – he loves her; the one really human and genuine emotion of his reserved and self-centred nature. And he will make her happy.”

The first few years of the marriage were a dream for Ruttie and Jinnah, the happiest time of their lives. They traveled across India , Europe and North America together. Ruttie watched with a great sense of pride the feverish political activity of her husband. She would be seen in the visitors’ gallery when Jinnah was due to speak, accompanied him to the High Court, and even attended the Nagpur session of the Congress in December 1920.

According to Wolpert: “They were a head- turning couple; he in his elegant suits, stitched in London , she with her long, flowing hair decked in flowers. There was no limit to their joy and satisfaction at that time. Their only woe was Ruttie’s complete isolation and ostracism from her family.”

Kanji Dwarkadas, a veteran leader of Congress and a close friend of the couple, who looked after Ruttie during her last days, wrote in his book Ruttie Jinnah: The story of a great friendship: “For Jinnah, who was not generous in many matters, no expense was too great to satisfy the extravagant claims of the baronet’s spoilt child. During a visit to Kashmir , she spent Rs 50,000 in refurnishing the boathouse and Jinnah gladly paid all the bills. He treated her wonderfully well, and paid without a murmur all the bills necessitated by the luxurious life she led. Ruttie’s fabulous beauty, spontaneous wit, and immense charm have been praised to the neglect of her serious interests.”

Even though Ruttie was much younger than Jinnah, she made him a very happy man. They had no separate existence and Jinnah found her a great source of inspiration.
He resigned from the Orient Club where he used to play chess and billiards. He was so deeply in love with Ruttie that he would return from the law courts on time each day and talk to her for hours on end.
Unfortunately, their happiness was short- lived and the marriage started to crack after 1922-3. What caused the ruination of the Jinnah-Ruttie marriage? Was it Jinnah’s busy political life and his inability to give enough time to Ruttie, their age difference, or their incompatibility of temperaments? He was cold, introverted and domineering. She was young, extroverted, glamorous. There is no clear answer but the fact remains that Ruttie and Jinnah still loved each other despite the rift in their marriage.
It is evident in every letter Ruttie wrote during that period, and every book written on their relationship. She moved to London with Dina in 1922 and from there too, her heart was still set on her life with Jinnah.
She wrote in a letter to Kanji in India :“And just one thing more – go and see Jinnah and tell me how he is – he has a habit of overworking himself and now that I am not there to tease and bother him, he will be worse than ever.”

After her return, the couple tried one more time to save their failing marriage and took a five-month tour to Europe and North America together. But the rift grew and by January 1928 they were virtually separated, when Ruttie became seriously ill with cancer. Shortly before her death, she wrote a letter to Jinnah from Marseilles , France where she had gone for treatment. It turned out to be her last letter to him (larger view of original hand-written letter with typed text here

S. S. Rajputana,
Marseilles 5 Oct 1928

Darling – thank you for all you have done. If ever in my bearing your once tuned senses found any irritability or unkindness – be assured that in my heart there was place only for a great tenderness and a greater pain – a pain my love without hurt. When one has been as near to the reality of Life (which after all is Death) as I have been dearest, one only remembers the beautiful and tender moments and all the rest becomes a half veiled mist of unrealities. Try and remember me beloved as the flower you plucked and not the flower you tread upon.

I have suffered much sweetheart because I have loved much. The measure of my agony has been in accord to the measure of my love.

Darling I love you – I love you – and had I loved you just a little less I might have remained with you – only after one has created a very beautiful blossom one does not drag it through the mire. The higher you set your ideal the lower it falls.

I have loved you my darling as it is given to few men to be loved. I only beseech you that the tragedy which commenced in love should also end with it.

Darling Goodnight and Goodbye

Ruttie

It is a pity that none of the letters that Jinnah wrote to Ruttie have ever been made public. M.C. Chagla, a former Chief Justice of the Bombay High Court and a diplomat at the UN, has described the last days of Ruttie and Jinnah’s marriage in his book “Roses in December”. Chagla knew the couple very well, as he assisted Jinnah at his chambers during that time. He idealized Jinnah but severed all ties when he began working on the idea of an independent state for the Muslims of India. He writes:
By 1927, Ruttie and Jinnah had virtually separated. Ruttie’s health deteriorated rapidly in the years after they returned from their final trip together. Ruttie lived at the Taj Hotel in Bombay, almost a recluse as she became more and more bed-ridden. Kanji continued to be her constant companion. By February 18, 1929 she had become so weak that all she could manage to say to him was a request to look after her cats. Two days later, Ruttie Petit Jinnah died. It was her 29th birthday.
She was buried on February 22 in Bombay according to Muslim rites. Jinnah sat like a statue throughout the funeral but when asked to throw earth on the grave, he broke down and wept. That was the only time when I found Jinnah betraying some shadow of human weakness. It’s not a well publicised fact that as a young student in England it had been one of Jinnah’s dreams to play Romeo at The Globe. It is a strange twist of fate that a love story that started like a fairy tale ended as a haunting tragedy to rival any of Shakespeare’s dramas.”

The second time Jinnah ever broke down was in August 1947 when he visited Ruttie’s grave one last time before leaving for Pakistan . The architect of Pakistan paid a high price for Partition by leaving two of his most beloved possessions on ‘the other’ side of the border, the Jinnah House on Malabar Hill where he had the happiest moments of his life, and his beloved wife Ruttie who remains buried in Bombay. Jinnah left India in August 1947, never to return again, but he left behind a piece of his heart in a little grave in a cemetery in Bombay …

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The beginning of a new year is an opportunity to start things afresh — why should your blog not benefit as well? Here are six things you can do to start your blogging in 2015 energized, recharged, and focused.

Now is the perfect time to get familiar with some of these new features for a smoother blogging experience. Whether it’s from your computer, tablet, or smartphone, you can check out which posts generated the most likes and comments (and much more) on your Stats page, browse through all your posts and pages, and easily tweak your account settings, review your billing history, and visit your trophy case from My Profile.

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Disclaimer: Writing these notes first as a patient then as an associate member of Thalassemia Federation of Pakistan

Finally after so long delay national thalassemia conference took place in Fatima Memorial Hospital College of Medical & Dentistry in Lahore on 29th-30th November 2014.

Delegates from all over Pakistan started reaching Lahore on 28th November, there was an executive meeting held on 28th November in Carlton Hotel where executive members were invited and few patients from Punjab were also there as observers.

The conference kicked off on 29th November at FMH College of Medical & Dentistry at 9AM after the member’s registration. Starting from the Quran recitation and welcome address by president TFP Punjab, activities of TFP were shared by general secretary TFP Dr. Yasmin Rashid, with few words from Dr Joveria Manan, Chief Guest, Actor Adeel Hashmi and President TFP the ceremony for gold…

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Dear Quaid,
I am sorry. We are sorry for we have failed. We are devastated. Doomed. Trapped in a quagmire, getting out of which seems hardly possible. Things have changed since you left. Pakistan is not what it used to be. Pakistan is not what you founded it to be. Pakistan is not ‘the land of the pure’ anymore. In fact, this phrase, land-of-the-pure, seems rather ironical when associated with Pakistan.

Our system is no longer a pristine, pellucid sea; it is adulterated with contaminations so jeopardous like corruption, nepotism and fraud. Our institutions have tarnished reputations. Plundering police. Greedy Government. Misleading media.

Terrorism has spread in the country like a wild, unquenchable fire. Every year thousands of innocent lives are extinguished just because of it. We are being ruled by cruel, cold-blooded demons that have insatiable craving and unquenchable avarice for loot and plunder. They carry no care, no…